Camaraderie
by rayemars
Summary: Sakura, Sasuke, a prison cell, and a deserved but unlikely ending.


Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

This was originally written of prompt 18 of 30 Kisses: "say ahh..."  
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**-'**

Sakura entered the holding cell in the late afternoon, while the shift change was occurring. It was a short and narrow cell, to prevent its occupants from being able to use taijutsu or a majority of ninjutsu. A note from the Hokage that she handed over silently made the guard leave after letting her in. Sasuke only glanced up when she first appeared, before turning his red gaze back to the opposite wall.

"Hi, Sasuke-kun," she said, still standing by the door.

"Hello," he replied after half a minute.

She looked down and unbuckled her medical pack.  
-

Sasuke's hands and feet were bound with steel-treated lead restraints, and weighted with chains heavy enough to keep his movements slow. His breakfast that morning had been drugged so that he was unconscious long enough for Tsunade to perform acupuncture on his hands and throat, temporarily blocking his ability to summon chakra. The cuffs left no way for Sakura to check the pulse in his wrists, so she felt for it in his throat.

Sasuke remained silent until she used chakra to check his eyes. He hissed then.

When she was done, Sakura pulled her hand back and skipped the years' worth of small talk. "Was it worth it?"

"He's dead," Sasuke replied, and Sakura guessed he was trying very hard to make that mean 'Yes.'

"Why are you bothering with this?" he asked a little while later, when she had finished taking his temperature.

"There's a lot of arguing going on," she said. "There are some people pushing to let you be reinstated, after you've been in jail for several years." She paused, and then offered, "The Hyuugas are on that side."

"I know," Sasuke replied. "One of them came to speak to me before. They want to offer me a place in the branch house and breed the sharingan out of existence."

Sakura looked up from the paper she'd been writing on. "They said that?"

"He didn't need to." Sasuke's arms were resting on his legs, chains dangling in between, and he was still staring at the wall instead of her. "They haven't had a reason to feel responsible to the Uchiha clan for generations."

Sakura finished recording the temperature and set the papers back to the side.

The secondary seal Kakashi had laid had been removed while Sasuke was gone, but there was a new and harsher one in its place. Sasuke remained still and incredibly tense beneath her palm as she checked them both. When she was satisfied that the curse seal wasn't running rampant in his chakra system, she turned her attention to the still-healing wounds that he'd received during his fight with the ANBU.

Sakura healed three of the most painful-looking ones, so that Sasuke was breathing less labouredly when she finished. She stood and wrote several more notes on the paper.

"Okay," she said, setting it and the pen down. She reached into her medical pack and pulled out a needle and a small bottle quarter-full of clear liquid. "All that leaves is this."

She had nearly filled the needle before Sasuke asked, "Did you request this job?"

"No," Sakura replied after a long pause. She shook the needle and squirted a little of the liquid out from habit. "But I'm the only medicnin that Naruto won't kill for it."

"And the one I'd be least likely to fight?"

She put the bottle away, back only partly turned to him. "I don't pretend you care that much any more."

"Hn," he replied, and she couldn't read his tone or his face.

It was impossible to look him in the eyes now that she had filled the needle. Sakura tied the rubber band below his elbow silently.

"Tell Kakashi he was wrong," Sasuke asked, startling her. The knot slipped slightly.

She retightened it. "Wrong about what?"

"He'll know," Sasuke replied. "If he doesn't, then it wasn't important."

She nodded once.

He watched with passive interest as she slid the needle in cleanly, no blood welling up. Sakura depressed the plunger carefully, making sure not to insert too much too fast, and thought how weird, how wrong, how completely fucked up it was that this was the last thing they would see together. How stupid it was that she had touched him more in this hour than the months they spent as teammates. How scared she was of telling Naruto the news when this was finished.

When she was done, Sakura carefully concealed the bottle and needle in her medical pouch. Sasuke was still staring at his arm, and didn't seem to notice as she removed the rubber band and rubbed the area to get rid of the red marks.

It didn't take long for the poison to take effect. Sakura had tampered with the recipe Tsunade had given her just enough that Sasuke would feel minimal pain, but not enough that it would become traceable. It would still look like an aneurysm in his brain had ruptured under the stress of her examining his curse seal, and the hemorrhage of blood had killed him before he could be moved to surgery.

Sakura healed over the tiny pinprick left by the needle before she began shouting for the guard. When the man arrived with backup, Sakura had her hands pressed against Sasuke's head where it had slumped to the narrow cot and her chakra visible between her fingers. She yelled frantically for them to get help from the hospital.  
-

When she went to tell Naruto the news that evening, with ANBU guards carefully concealed around the apartment building, she didn't have to fake her shaking or her tears. The breakdown she had in his small living room was real as well. Sakura could feel claws pressing against her back even as Naruto hugged her and tried to coax her to stop crying.


End file.
